Bogged down with heavy trade deficit, India's new experiment-- mixing Bollywood with business-- is turning out to be a success in wooing huge Chinese crowd for its trade seminars which hopefully would give a big push to Indian exports to China.
The show held on Wednesday and Tuesday at Nanjing was a hit as hundreds of Chinese people including the local Governor Luo Zhijung and Provincial Chinese Communist Party
Chief Zhu Shanlu along with Indian Ambassador to China S Jaishankar took part.
It was rare show for Chinese as the 53 member team of Bollywood dancers depicted India's past and present partly redesigned by Jaishankar himself to bring about India awareness among Chinese, especially among its businessmen and
professionals, which he hopes would play a role in promoting Indian brand image in China, one of the world's largest market.
"Indian music and films are big hit in China. But our cultural troops visiting China needed little adjustments to make it more appealing and pleasing for Chinese, so we at the
Indian Embassy come into picture. It appears to be working and the shows are big draw," Jaishankar told PTI here.
The Shubra Bhradwaj dance group from Mumbai is making waves in China as its shows in Hohhot in China's Inner Mongolia province and at the Indian Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo were a big hit with hundreds flocking to see their
performance.
The troop would be performing in 11 more cities culminating in Beijing on August 8.
But it was not entertainment alone as most of the shows were preceded with business seminars organised by the Indian Embassy in different cities to bring awareness in four
its trade products, IT, pharma, agro products and engineering services.
With bilateral trade set to hit a record USD 60 billion, India was keen to bridge the massive trade gap. Of the USD 42 billion odd bilateral trade last year, India, mainly relaying on commodity products like iron ore, ended up
with USD 16 billion trade deficit.
With China making big inroads into India's infrastructure projects, including telecom, the Chinese volumes were expected to be a lot higher this year.
Also India wanted to make the best out of the assurances by Chinese government to open up its market.
"Opening up itself is not going to bring about business. We need to aggressively market Indian business. So through these shows we are assisting the Indian companies to make a mark here," Jaishankar said.
Several top Indian companies took part in the seminar yesterday attended by representative of 120 Chinese companies in Nanjing, east China.
Addressing the meeting Jaishankar said "the primary driver of this (Sino-Indian) economic cooperation is the growing appreciation among Indian companies that they can
leverage China's capabilities in fields like power, telecommunication, or electronic products".
"However, the same degree of awareness does not yet appear to be displayed by Chinese companies when it comes to Indian capabilities in information technology, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy or engineering," he said.
"Today's event is part of our effort to bridge that awareness gap. I would encourage Indian companies to make more efforts to inform their potential Chinese partners as to how
they can benefit from such cooperation. Equally, I would urge Chinese companies to display a more open attitude towards partnering and sourcing from Indian companies who represent a strong value proposition," he said.
K Nagraraj Naidu, First Secretary of the Economic and Commercial section of the Indian Embassy made a presentation on strengths of Indian business companies and the need for Chinese firms to take advantage of Indian IT firms to improve their businesses.
Some of the Indian companies are already doing good business in Nanjing. An Indian firm Lakshmi Machine Works was already well established in the region selling textile machinery made in India.
While Mahindra and Mahindra tractor division has totally acquired Chinese company MM Yueda and sold 70 per cent of their products within China and exported the rest.